Controlling land use change in coastal areas is one of the world’s sustainable development goals and a great challenge. Existing research includes in-depth studies of land use change in relatively developed regions, but research on economically less developed but fast-growing regions is lacking. Since the reform and opening up in Vietnam, the influences of globalization have prompted the economy of the coastal area to develop rapidly, making it one of the less developed but rapidly developing regions where human activities and global changes vigorously interact.

To combat land degradation and deterioration issues, the Grain to Green project (GGP) was implemented on the Chinese Loess Plateau in 1999 and substantially altered the land cover by converting slope farmland into forest and grassland. To effectively achieve sustainable land restoration management and avoid stakeholder conflicts, this study aimed to understand how local stakeholders perceived the current land restoration process and expectations for future land restoration policy, as well as how stakeholders assessed the GGP impacts on local ecosystem service changes.